June 28, 2011

"... The problem with this argument is that the average shale formation is thousands of feet underground, while the average drinking well or aquifer is a few hundred feet deep. Separating the two is solid rock."

We have been fracking for many years. I worked on the construction of fracking rigs back in the mid-70s, and it was not new then. This is nothing to get excited about, except that it is doing good things for the US in the area of energy right now.

Wait, aren't the chemicals they are using - derived from oil? So we are pushing oil into the ground to get the ground to release more oil that is already there to begin with?

I recall a converstaion I had years back with an environmentalist who was concerned we would travel to Mars and do terraforming there... she was concerned about the environment on Mars (what environment I asked?)

There are very limited scenarios where fresh water can be contaminated as a result of oil and gas production (including fracking). Under current rules and with modern techniques its exremely unlikely bordering on impossible.

Brilliant? You must mean the actual artwork/animation, right? The text was a neo-Luddite paean to anti-progress. "Things happen, so do nothing!" is not much of a message. And the weaselly way they talk about the oil and gas companies getting closer and closer to where you live is straight shlock. Here's a clue Mr. Animator, if you're going to talk about the possible downsides of fracking, why not mention it's definite upside? You know, little stuff like heat, light and all the other necessities of life we get from fossil fuels? Maybe that's in the next installment? Yeah right, sometimes I say crazy things...

Hmm, seems that point of the video (very well done btw) is that water from containment reservoirs can (eventually will) leach into ground water. So the fact that aquifers and oil shale are well-separated is irrelevant. Generating millions of gallons of toxin-laden waste water. What could possibly go wrong?

Look at the talent put into disinformation. Somehow, they've even turned the exchange of funds for services rendered into a crime, because everyone who thinks like this is being bettered - the artists, the environmentalists, the marks this video was made for - by doing the wrong thing.

What is that rule about an enterprise where one enthusiastic person, working in the wrong direction, can fuck up the whole thing? Well, there's your example.

Unfortunately, while there is a way to stop liberals beyond clubbing them over the head - the cultural/arts angle - most conservatives can't see that either, so we're stuck wallowing in the mud with this bullshit.

That, to me, is one of the most depressing parts of this whole set-up. THEY have TV, THEY have Hollywood, THEY have music, THEY have the art galleries, THEY have video games and every other communication apparatus ever invented. And conservatives STILL can't get it through their thick heads to fund conservative artists to attack on that playing field.

My BIL was telling me about insulation-producing plants in NJ who are poisoning wells due to using phenols in the production of spun fiberglass (phenols are a binding agent that has replaced formeldehyde). Has poisoned all the well water in the area for miles around.

The problem with fracking is that industrial well-water poisoning still happens, alot, and that anyone who is at all concerns just needs to hear "They are spreading poisonous chemicals into the ground" and that's the end of logical analysis.

Fracking and horizontal drilling aren't new technologies, and have been combined long before. What really changed to spur this new boom is the price of oil, which makes it cost-effective to use these technologies on low-permeability reservoirs. Even these shale reservoirs aren't new - they've been known about for a long time, and we've even had a good estimations of their vast capacity, but there was no point worrying about them back when oil was $17/bbl. But at $50-$70/bbl they're worth considering, and at $100/bbl they're definitely worth extracting. There has been a bit of a lead time because of the necessity to acquire leases, as well as design and production of the various bits of equipment that are needed for all this, getting pipelines into the areas, etc.

The ability to dramatize that is the one skill artists posses, is a very dangerous thing.

Case in point: Margaret Atwood's hilariously stupid A Handmaid's Tale, which prophesied a horrific evangelical Christian theocratic state in Canada that would oppress women.

In fact, Canada became a feminist theocratic state, imprisoning evangelical preachers for daring to teach the traditional Christian view of homosexuality. And that feminist theocratic state throws men out of their home and deprives them of their children without due process.

What they need to do is offer the Goracle some big bucks to endorse it. Him or the Dalai Lama. Of course with the D.L. ""there won't be any money, but when you die, on your deathbed, you will receive total consciousness." So I got that goin' for me, which is nice.""

I always thought The Handmaid's Tale worked primarily as a criticism of female-oppressive regimes in the Islamic world, which (you'll remember) feminists were angry about at the time.

The setting was Westernized (which at the time necessitated Christianizing the oppressors) in part in order to make the main character's situation more vivid. After all, the women living under oppressive regimes in Arab countries were being tortured and stoned in the name of a belief system which ostensibly they themselves subscribed to.

I think if you focus on the ridiculousness of a Christian sect becoming similarly powerful and oppressive, you miss an important point. The premise is pretty ridiculous, but it's not a bad vehicle to get Western women to empathize with women living under, e.g., the Taliban.

Thanks for the advice, dingleberry. Ooops, am I Kos Kid now? Or maybe the Kos Kid is the jackanape who squeals "You're a Liberal!" when I point out that his childish complaint of "millions of gallons of waste water!" is simply a reflexive whine that doesn't actually describe any kind of problem? Maybe?

There are very real issues involved but, as far as I can tell, they are not unique to fracturing and they are certainly not new.

In any oil or gas drilling/production operation there is the issue of containment and disposal of waste water and chemicals. This is nothing new and can be dealt with. Good practices are necessary, good regulations are necessary, and good enforcement is necessary, but it can be done.

The other obvious problem is migration of fluids within the well bore, behind casing. Even though the producing formation and the aquifer may be separated by thousands of feet, if the well casing is not adequately bonded to the intervening formations, the shallow aquifers are at risk of contamination. Same remedies apply: good practices, good regulations, and good enforcement.

It is so much better produced than most lefty propaganda. Not your usual snarly, snarky, profanity-laced fare.

I don't know how hazardous fracking is to our water supply, and the environment in general, but you would have to be awfully naive not to at least question. Leaching from containment reservoirs has been a problem in other industries. Seems like a reasonable concern.

It seems that they are concerned with the holding ponds for waste water, not the bedrock separating the oil from the water table.

Really, you want to power that lamp, you don't need oil, just stick the plug into that slot in the wall and everything works fine. Want gas for your car? Why drill when you can just fill up at the corner gas station?

What part of "baseboard heating" don't these evil corporations understand?

Its interesting that liberals talk about the corporations and their evil dirty profit almost exactly like people in the middle ages talked about goblins and demons. Everything bad that's ever happened is because of the evil corporations and their hunger for profits. Here hold this hacky-sack filled with patchouli, it will ward off the evil capitalism!

. So the fact that aquifers and oil shale are well-separated is irrelevant. Generating millions of gallons of toxin-laden waste water. What could possibly go wrong?

Almost any oil or gas drilling/production operation will produce vast quantities of waste water and chemicals that need to be properly contained and disposed of--this is not an issue unique to wells subjected to fracturing.

The technology exists to do it properly. Recent history suggests that just because the technology exists doesn't mean that it will be properly applied. That's why we need regulations and enforcement.

"The animation looked like it came from 1966, an appearance that was intended, but the risk is the message may also seem outdated. The look-and-feel was inviting for the folks over 50, but do retro cartoons inspire the young?"

It's retro-retro, because in the 60s, that style was thought of as a reference back to the 1890s or something. There were a lot of commercials with that vibe.

I own the OGM's (oil, gas and mineral rights) on my 40 acres in northern Pa. I drilled 2 shallow oil wells on my property. These are not marcellous shale wells. One well drilled was 300' from my water well supply. The driller went down 460' until he hit solid rock. He then installed welded casing to the 460' depth.

Concrete is then forced down 460' until it comes to the surface on the outside wall of the casing - forming solid barrier on the outside of the pipe.

The driller then proceeds to drill to the final depth of 1400'.

I then had a company perform a procedure similar to ultra sound to determine the location of the sand formations. The location for these sand formations in shallow oil wells generally start a depth of 1000'. Theses formations are then fracked with a sand and water mixture.

My point in describing this exercise it to show that any chemical that might surface or show up in a water supply must penetrate several hundred of solid rock. Or several thousand feet in a marcellous shale well.

I just don't agree. It went too far and even to a natural liberal it should seem a little insultingly simplistic and cliche. The boogie men presented were too standard and worn out. Effective maybe to really dumb people, but an intelligent person, even a liberal one, would see the claims as the over-played standards. In short, it smells of propaganda, even to a believer.

Absolutely. That is indeed the solution, same as for food production, pharmaceuticals, etc. I think the present concern is that fracking practices have gotten ahead of regulations. No doubt it can be performed safely enough in certain geological areas, but industry is profit-driven (this is a good thing) and requires being held to standards. Not because industrial concerns are inherently "evil", but it's hard to be competitive AND safe if your competition is not also required to meet a standard.

Contaminated groundwater is not an unsolvable problem either. It takes water purification plants, which are expensive, but it can be done, and in fact a lot if not most communities do serious water purification now. If you think about it, most big cities are located on big rivers, exceeded their groundwater pumping capacity long ago, and are now taking most of their drinking water from the rivers, and of course, discharging it back to the rivers as sewage less what is lost to evaporation.O.K., the cities and larger communities treat their sewage so that it is fairly clean when the effluent leaves their jurisdiction, but the smaller communities often don't, and of course storm runoff is rarely treated at all.Some communities still have combined storm- and sanitary sewer systems, such that when it rains, the sanitary sewage goes downriver with storm runoff.

When people over-focus on the risks, when they are minimal or manageable, they usually opt for a more dangerous path, even one that's clearly inferior or impossible. This is the M.O. of the liberal. Environmentalism is even more rife with this illogic than economics.

I expect that fracking can be very beneficial and the risks well managed, but that means absolutely nothing to some people.

...I think the present concern is that fracking practices have gotten ahead of regulations. No doubt it can be performed safely enough in certain geological areas, but industry is profit-driven (this is a good thing) and requires being held to standards....

Yes, the "concern" is that fracking has gotten ahead of the regulations. This concern has been promulgated by environmentalists -- despite the fact fracking is an old technology that has been regulated for years. In other words, the concern is based on a false premise. The technology has NOT gotten ahead of the regulations.

So, if fracking can be done safely (which it can and has been for decades), why are the environmentalists raising this false issue? Because they don't want any additional fossil energy production, no matter how safely the energy can be produced. The availability of additional fossil energy supplies is a bad thing (to the environmentalists) because it reduces the incentive to switch to green energy sources and to reduce greenhouse gas production (which comes from using fossil fuels).

At a U.S. House Oversight Committee hearing yesterday, President Barack Obama’s EPA administrator, Lisa Jackson, admitted the environmental risk of hydraulic fracturing is practically nonexistent.“I’m not aware of any proven case where the fracking process itself has affected water, although there are investigations ongoing,” she said.

Speaking of liberal environmental logic, the principal of the engineering firm I worked for about 30 years ago calculated that with the environmental and other Federal regulations then in place, it would take a mininmum of 9 years to get a small-town sanitary sewage plant in place.That was if there was no opposition, no difficulties about financing, and no unusual technical problems, just everything falling perfectly into place.

The power to tax is the power to destroy, but the power to "regulate" is even more potent. They've regulated us out of our lightbulbs, our gasoline (diluting it with garbage etahnol and charging us extra for the privilege) and everything else they can get their hands on. It's what they do.

As to the effectiveness of the propaganda cartoon, I guess brilliance is in the eye of the beholder. I for one can't wait for "Schoolhouse Rock" to tackle Obama's shadow war in Libya.

The Greens seem to want the North American continent returned to its 1620 carrying capacity of 250,000 stone age people. If they just told the truth about "Pollution" then we could use the immense energy resources here and in Alaska. But they are trained liars.

Maryland is the first state in the country to impose a new requirement to graduate from high school -- something called environmental literacy.

But what is that? That is the question State Senator J. B. Jennings is asking.

"What kind of education is it going to be?” he asks. “Is it going to be fact-based? Or is it going to be theory-based, which is usually politically, theory driven. And you can think, it's going to be about global warming or climate change."

While reading the hometown paper at my Mom's hospital bedside yesterday, I noticed that there were two articles. The front-page article likened the Marcellus Shale speculation to an Enron-like bubble, citing Industry Emails and such that said something like that. So shale and fracking are not the panacea they have been described to be. And then on page 6 there was an article about a gusher well in NE PA (I think) that was producing all sorts of gas.

Which to believe?

The hunters in PA form a fairly large group, and I wonder how they will react to possible water contamination. It's pretty easy to befoul water when the ground is full of pyrite. Look at Bald Eagle Mountain's decapitation to make way for I-99 to see what happens.

Lincolntf, they were exactly right about what would happen with the I-99 route over Bald Eagle Mountain. Although I concede they put forth multiple possibilities and may have hit the one that occurred by good luck.

Re: The two articles, I'm sure the truth is somewhere in the middle. The time to invest in fracking is probably now or a year+ ago, but be ready to abandon ship -- I guess that's true of any investement, however.

Fracking waste water is acidic and heavily laden with heavy metals. Most water treatment plants are unable to separate heavy metals and those that can are left with large quantities of highly toxic sludge. Recirculating the water increases the concentration of metals with each pass. It is better to try to separate the metals onsite but gas companies resist the added cost, preferring to pass it on to the communities. Oil wells with water burdens have some of the same problems but usually can pump the water back down the well hole.

Any energy production method has costs in environmental damage and waste management. I don't want to be ripped off by companies dumping those costs onto the rest of us. I have little faith that state governments won't be bought off. We've seen this before with coal and oil. There is a reason all the streams in West Virginia run orange and the people who live there suffer from arsenic, chromium and lead poisoning. Gas companies have every incentive to pass on as many of their costs as they can to the rest of us, it is to the public's benefit to push those costs back onto the people making the profits from it. It's a lot less costly to pay more for gas extracted cleanly now than to struggle to make undrinkable water and fouled land usable later.

And BCW is very much on target also--no such thing as a free lunch--although the oil & gas companies try to get one. (And I am ALL for "drill, baby, drill, except there is a responsible way and an irresponsible way. One of the more under-publicized items is the pollution of large parts of the S.W. Louisiana bayou eco-system over the past 60 yrs by oil company chemical waste discharge dump pits--which are, unlike the run-off in W. Va., mostly out of sight of the general public.

I just read an article that said a major reason for the flooding on the Missouri being so devastating this year, is that the Corpse of the Eggineers is now required by environmental regulations to hold back water in the dams on the upper Missouri and its tributaries in order to release a "spring freshet" to simulate conditions on the river prior to the arrival of evil mankind.Despite winter snowfalls up to 200% of normal and everybody and his uncle full knowing that a major spring flooding event was coming, they still had to follow orders, and so the reservoirs started the melting season with little or no flood control capacity - the major purpose for which they were originally constructed.

At a U.S. House Oversight Committee hearing yesterday, President Barack Obama’s EPA administrator, Lisa Jackson, admitted the environmental risk of hydraulic fracturing is practically nonexistent.“I’m not aware of any proven case where the fracking process itself has affected water, although there are investigations ongoing,” she said.

Funny how the leftie media and environmental lobby never mentions the "unexpected!" contamination of California's groundwater by MTBE that they were shilling to meet EPA regs.

Mandated by Sacramento in the 90's, over the objections of many Californians, who were subjected to the same sort name calling and smug know-it-all nonsense. The chemical didn't perform as promised and we're stuck with a massive clean-up.

So excuse me if, I don't believe a damned thing the anti-oil & gas lobby has to say.

The environmental movement used to be in favor of fracking. Then the discovery of massive deposits of natural gas came along and they suddenly realized the their beloved step child alternative energy would never be able to compete with cheap plentiful natural gas.

Now they are fighting fracking tooth and nail. Their success is mixed but that are going to make a play at the national level, maybe through czars and executive fiat, to get it prohibited. NG, of course, is among the most environmentally friendly hydrocarbons.

Cheap, plentiful energy from our own land to heat our homes, drive our vehicles, and power of businesses. Wouldn't want that to happen, would we?

What they need to do is offer the Goracle some big bucks to endorse it.

This does seem to be coming around a bit. I seem to remember some sweetheart deal that his father got, I think, for him, with Occidental. Seems that his father was their guy in D.C., and there was something about the Gores getting some land cheap from them, and then leasing it back to them for, I believe, coal.

In any case, the Gores are no stranger to taking and living off bribe money from oil companies. That sort of money is part of what helped AlGore, Jr. go to such nice schools growing up.

The only message I get from this animation is that evil mustachioed oil barons make money from drilling, and that that is really awful.

Then, whatever you do, don't go see Cars 2.

Another film where excellent animation is put to poor use. And as Lileks said, making Big Oil the antagonist in a movie about anthropomorphic automobiles is like ending "Ratatouille" with a message about the importance of a low-fat diet.

What sticks out to me most in this little PSA is that there really isn't any evidence of poisoning happening, it's just that "things find a way" to happen. They might happen! They could happen! There's a remote possibility of "things" happening! So we have to be against those "things."

BJM, MBTE was the cheapest alternative to tetraethyllead and has problems but the amount of lead on the roadside and in children in urban areas has decreased significantly in the last ten years. MBTE pollution in water can be controlled but lead in the air cannot.

Hagar, your "spring freshet" story about the midwest flooding has no basis in fact. The snowpack in the Northwest and Western Canada is at record levels, which has added to very heavy and persistent rains; the flood control capacity is just not enough. If you had looked before sounding off, you would have found data comparing dam capacities with flow cfs. The Core can only trade off where flooding happens, not stop it.

after watching this, errr scare grandma cartoon, I have decided to look at opening a buggy whip plant - Cause you know with no oil, no gas, no nuke power, no coal, no wind power due to killing birdies, you all are going to need them whips for your mules

Also, why is 500 feet of rock considered an impenetrable barrier? No well would be drilled if the capacity was limited to 500 feet around the well. The intent of fracking is to break up rock at a distance from the well. The hope is that the fractures remain in the local shale layer but shales are not that strong and full of faulting. The barrier layers may remain intact in 9 out of 10 cases but there are problems. for example:http://www.hcn.org/issues/43.11/hydrofracked-one-mans-quest-for-answers-about-natural-gas-drilling/print_view

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."

Applies perfectly to the charlatans, frauds and all-around greedy hogs who have always been the ones pushing the various "Global Warming", "Climate Change", "Fracking" hysterias. They all lie because to do otherwise would mean unemployment.

Also, why is 500 feet of rock considered an impenetrable barrier? No well would be drilled if the capacity was limited to 500 feet around the well.

Mostly productive formations are layered like pancakes. A high porosity and high permeability zone (e.g. sandstone) can draw, eventually at a great distance best illiustrated by rules on well spaciing. Fracking into one formation you greatly increase permeability near the well bore and thus production.

Impermeable formations above and below act like barriers and, in fact, are necessary for the oil and gas to be trapped.

For years the Green Nazi line has been we cannot drill our way to enough oil, so we need blessed solar and wondrous wind and miracle ethanol! (Amended to exclude the miracle ethanol recently).Ignoring that as Green Nazis, with little science and engineering education given in poly sci and postmodern critical thought degree programs - we no longer use oil to generate electricity.

We also got the line that coal was too dirty, nukes 'too dangerous' to use. When they halfheartedly said nat gas was at least clean, we still had to focus mainly on blessed solar and wondrous wind as we soon will have no natural gas.

When technology undercut the Green Nazi argument by giving us 400 years of natural gas at present rates, with another 400 years thought off shore - the Green Nazis saw the threat to socialist control of the masses and launched into the "Deadly Fracking!!" PR campaign the usual liberals and NYC/LA/DC progressive Jews who run the mainstream media jumped behind them on.

I don't really think fracking is a problem, but I would feel nervous if it was being done near me. I paid several thousand dollars for my 396' water well. If someone is going to make money out of contaminating my well, I want to be paid for it.

I just graduated from a top 20 law school in the midwest and am disappointed to see that the only Northern California (where I am trying to start my career) jobs listed on the career services listserv are for EarthJustice in Oakland. With the economy as bad as it is, I almost felt desperate enough to apply ... this video makes me feel a lot better about trusting my instincts and not signing up for a liberal organization that tugs on heartstrings, favoring gimmicky cartoons over real life facts.

Hagar: The article is disingenuous:The core responds primarily to lobbying by the hydroelectric industry and fishing lobbies who can influence the region's Senators and Congressmen. Every foot of depth is a bigger head pressure and stored supply. Power and flood control are directly opposing uses. Similarly, boat recreation behind dams also conflicts with flood control as marina docks and ramps are affected by changing water levels.

The environmental lobby actually has less influence (can you name a congressman from that region who who care what they say?) and different objectives from the fishing lobby because the rivers and dams are generally stocked with still-water fish intolerant of moving water. The environmental lobby would prefer flow-through operation of the dams, which would maintain capacity for flood emergencies.

If you take an example, the Fort Peck Dam, levels have always been kept relatively high over the winter, falling in the early part of this decade only because of low snowpack:http://www.nwd-mr.usace.army.mil/rcc/reports/pdfs/MainstemElevationsStorages-15%20years.pdfNote the "multiple use zone" which means power generation and boat access. There hasn't been any change in the objective because of any release requirements.

Most of the flood control capacity of these dams is lost to these COMMERCIAL competing interests and the dams have to be viewed as rate modifiers rather than by actual long term storage, thus cfs of melt matters at least as much as total acre-feet.